Wild West

by Elmer Kelton

  The cook was finishing supper. Wade stopped close to the cooking fire. “Milholland,” he called, “come over here.”

  Nervously the bent cowpuncher walked up to him. Price Stockton followed suspiciously.

  “I saw you let a steer get away this afternoon, Milholland,” Wade said severely. “He took off down a hill and you didn’t even make a move to stop him. You remember what I told you last night?”

  Silently the cowpuncher shook his head.

  “All right, then,” Wade spoke, “get your gear together. You’re leaving in the morning.”

  Stockton stepped up beside Milholland and stood there angrily, his face dark. “Maybe you need to remember what I told you last night, Massey. Milholland’s my man. If you fire him, you’ve got me to whip first.”

  Anger blazed in Wade. He glared at Stockton a moment. “If you want me to save your outfit for you, you’ve got to let me run this roundup.”

  He thought he might stare Stockton down. But the ranchman held his ground. “You’re running the roundup, Massey. But you’re not firing my men.”

  Wade had to give in. “You’re winning this hand, Milholland. I’m letting you stay against my better judgment. But from now on you’re riding with me. You’ll make a hand if I’ve got to drag you.”

  As they rode out the next morning in a different direction, Wade got a chance to move his horse up next to Stockton’s. “Milholland’s out of place here, Stockton,” he said quietly. “Why keep trying to protect him like he was a little boy?”

  Stockton gazed straight ahead. “You think he’s yellow. But he’s not. He was with Glenn Henry the day Glenn roped a big steer and got jerked down off a bluff. Glenn wound up on a ledge about forty feet below the trail, tore half to pieces. His horse was dead.

  “Corey Milholland crawled down to that ledge and worked Henry back up onto the trail a few inches at a time. It took guts to do it, Massey. If he had slipped he could’ve fallen back down the bluff and been killed along with Glenn.

  “He was afraid to leave Glenn alone up there, so he got him onto his own horse. Corey led the horse home, him walking along, holding Glenn in the saddle half the time. It took him nearly six hours to make it. Glenn died anyway, but it wasn’t Corey’s fault. He did his best and risked being killed.”

  Stockton took a deep breath, then went on, “So you see why he didn’t go off that hillside after the steer yesterday. He remembers what happened to Glenn. And you see why I’m keeping him, even if I’ve got to whip you to do it…”

  The next few days the cowboys spent in drives similar to that of the first day, each time covering new ground and bringing in seventy-five to a hundred or more cattle a day. By the time all the ground had been covered, there were around eight hundred head on grass and water in the canyon.

  During the drives Wade kept Corey Milholland close to him. The puncher was a little slow in following when the riding got tough, and occasionally he wouldn’t follow at all. Had it been up to Wade, he would have let the man go.

  Lodge Agnew worried him, too. It wasn’t anything he could put his finger on, but every time Wade turned his back on Agnew, he felt a tingling sensation up and down his spine. He knew that with him around, Agnew could still taste the threat of the penitentiary.

  Lodge made no attempt to get along, either with Wade or with Wade’s cowboys. He was especially contemptuous of the two Mexicans. One night he called big Felipe Sanchez a pelado, which in Spanish was like calling a man trash. Felipe jumped to his feet and whipped out a long-bladed knife. Before Wade could grab the vaquero and pull him away, blood dripped from a three-inch gash along Agnew’s cheek and spread into his week’s growth of beard.

  Wade took Felipe out away from the campfire, calmed him down a little and gave him a long lecture. But a new dread edged in with all his other troubles. He knew the fiery Felipe wouldn’t be content to let the thing lie as it was now. And he knew Lodge knew it.

  But Felipe never got a chance to carry the fight any further. He didn’t show up next afternoon at the end of the drive. When the day’s catch of cattle had been put in the canyon, the cowboys went back to look for him.

  They found his riderless horse first, with rope missing from the saddle. A little later they found Felipe at the bottom of a washout. His neck was broken. There were rope burns on his battered and torn body.

  “Dabbed a loop on something and then got tangled up in the rope,” Snort Shanks surmised.

  They took Felipe back to camp and dug a grave for him at the edge of the canyon. Stockton silently stood beside Wade as the last dirt was being shoveled into the hole.

  “Interest on that loan is beginning to run pretty high,” Wade commented quietly.

  When the job was done, he called the crew around him. “The cattle have got to get used to being herded if we’re going to have any luck driving them out of here. This is as good a time as any to start. We’ll set up guard shifts now, and we’ll start night-herding them.”

  Agnew grunted. The reddish light of the campfire reflected from the bandage on his cheek. “They can’t get away long’s they’re in that canyon. Looks to me like you’re just trying to give us some extra work.”

  Wade said, “As long as I’m bossing this outfit, you’ll do what I tell you and you’ll shut up about it.”

  Agnew grumbled, “Maybe you won’t be boss very long.”

  The cowboys started scouting over the ground they had worked before. There were still a number of outlawed cattle there that would have to be roped and dragged down out of the hills. Wade didn’t want to move camp until the area had been cleaned up.

  For three days the cowboys scouted and brought down cattle that had gotten away from them. The going was much slower now, for a cowboy might spend a couple of hours catching just one steer or one tough old bull.

  In some cases they would tie a gentler animal to the wild one, slowing the fire-eater down so he could be handled. Some of the outlaws had to be roped and thrown and wooden clogs tied to a foreleg. Then every time the animal tried to run away, the long clog would get tangled with his feet and throw him for a loop.

  By the end of the second day they had picked up only about forty cattle. Wade was beginning to think about the long drive to the railroad.

  The afternoon of the third day he almost met a fate similar to Felipe’s. Wade was working his way along a steep mountainside that had a sheer drop off the edge of the trail. Corey Milholland trailed along behind him.

  Corey had almost quit trying to make a hand after Felipe’s death. When the chase got perilous, he would hold up and pick his way along. He let many an animal get away.

  It didn’t do Wade any good to talk to him. He had about decided to start leaving Milholland in camp, to help the cook.

  The first sign he had of danger was the sound of rock striking rock. Jerking his head up, he saw big rocks bouncing down the mountainside.

  “Get back, Milholland!” he yelled. He spurred hard, trying to get away from the rocks.

  He was almost in the clear when his horse stumbled and went to its knees. Before Wade could move, a rock the size of a washtub slammed into the animal’s shoulder and knocked him off the trail.

  Wade choked off a cry of panic as he felt himself falling over the sheer edge. He grabbed at the shale and rocks as he slid. They broke his nails, tore his hands. Big rocks and little ones bounced off of him as he rolled, fell and slid.

  But at last he stopped. He wasn’t on any ledge. It was merely a little jut in the steep slope. If he held still, he might hang onto it. If he tried to move, he would probably fall some more.

  Fire burned a hundred places on his body. Pain lanced through him, seeming to pin him against the slope. His hat was gone. His shirt was ripped to shreds. Only his leather chaps had kept his legs from being torn as his arms were. Sweat burned into his skinned face as he slowly lifted his head and looked upward toward the trail. He figured he had slid thirty or forty feet.

  In a moment the frightened Corey Mi
lholland peered over the edge. Relief swelled over his face as he saw that Wade was still alive.

  “Hang on,” he called. “I’ll pitch you my rope.”

  But the rope didn’t reach. The end of it dangled a good ten feet above Wade’s head.

  Wade tried to inch up toward it, but he slipped and dropped another couple of feet down the slope.

  It was all up to Milholland now. Wade wouldn’t have given a plugged nickel for his chances in the cowpuncher’s hands. He could see doubt and fear play across the man’s face. Finally Milholland spoke.

  “I’ll try to work down there to where the rope will reach you. There’s a big rock I may be able to tie on to.”

  Hugging the slope, Wade could feel his heart hammering while Milholland carefully worked down off the trail. He closed his eyes once as the puncher’s foot slipped and a shower of dirt and pebbles came down. He expected to feel Corey’s body slam into his and knock both of them on down the slope.

  But somehow Milholland caught himself. In a few moments he had worked down to where a large rock stuck up out of the slope. He tied his end of the rope to it, then pitched the other end of it to Wade.

  Reaching out for it, Wade felt himself slip. He grabbed the rope just as he started to slide on down it. Hitting the end of the rope sent new pain tearing through him. But the rope held, and Wade held to it.

  Painfully he started working upward, hand over hand. It seemed it took him an hour to get up to the rock. Milholland pulled him up to its temporary safety, then untied the rope.

  “I’ll climb back up to the trail and pitch you the rope again,” he said. “In your shape you couldn’t climb that slope any other way.”

  Milholland went up, then helped Wade work on back to the trail.

  Wade sat there, panting, wincing at the pain and staring down at his dead horse far below.

  Finally he looked up at Milholland. “For a week now, Milholland, I’ve been calling you a coward. I hope you’ll let me take it back.”

  Wade shoved out his hand. Milholland took it.

  Next day Wade was too stiff and sore to go chasing wild cattle with the rest of the crew. He decided it was time to begin hunting for a new trail to the railroad. He loaded a pack mule with enough supplies to last a week, then struck out northward. He took Corey Milholland with him.

  There were only two directions the herd could go—west or north. The railroad swung up in a northerly direction when it reached a point about even with the ranch headquarters. To try getting to the road by the east would mean an extra hundred or hundred-fifty miles of driving over country as rough and violent as that in which the cattle ranged. The cowboys were sure to lose the biggest part of the herd in a stampede sooner or later.

  To the south lay nothing but more rough country, and, ultimately, the Republic of Mexico. To the north was the desert he had ridden over between the ranch and town.

  “We’ve tried that way before, a dozen times,” said Milholland as they sat beside a water hole, resting the horses. “The desert always licks us. They’ll stampede every time. First thing we know, most of the cattle are right back down here where they started from. We’re left with a little handful, just enough to take on in and sell for what things the ranch can’t do without.”

  He pointed to a cholla cactus. “It’s them things as much as anything else that causes us trouble. A steer swings his tail, gets it tangled up in one of them chollas and stampedes the whole outfit. The stuff’s like a jungle out yonder in the desert. There’s no way of getting around it when you take the trail north.”

  Wade let his gaze range over the land to the west. Over there, long miles away, the great rim stretched as far as the eye could see. Its sheer walls jutted almost straight up from the floor of a valley in which a river moved slowly southward.

  “Ever tried taking them over the rim, Corey, and moving them to a loading point farther west?”

  Milholland shook his head. “Over that rim? It’d take a mountain climber, and a good one at that, just to get over it afoot in most places. Only way you’d ever get a herd of cattle over it would be to take them out one at a time on a pulley, like drawing water out of a well. There ain’t anybody that foolish.”

  Wade couldn’t take his eyes off the rim. “Ever tried it?”

  “Never even been over there. You can tell from here it’s impossible.”

  Wade still wondered. “How long would it take to move a herd to it from here?”

  Milholland’s eyes widened. “Five days. Maybe six. But I’m telling you, there ain’t any use studying about it. It won’t work.”

  Wade swung back into the saddle. “Just the same, Corey, we’re riding over to have a look.”

  It was after sundown almost a week later when they got back to the roundup camp. Wade caught his breath up short as he saw Bess Henry standing beside the cook. Firelight reflected in her oval face. Her slender figure in full-length riding skirt was silhouetted brilliantly against the darkness.

  Wade hoped for a smile from her, a word of greeting. He got only her level stare. Disappointed but not really surprised, he tipped his hat and rode his horse on out to unsaddle him.

  As Wade walked back into the firelight, Price Stockton looked up from his supper plate.

  “We’d about decided you weren’t coming back, Massey.”

  Lodge Agnew stood with hands shoved into his waistband. His turbid brown eyes held something like laughter, but Wade knew there wasn’t any humor in him. The cut on the man’s cheek still showed through his whiskers. “Yeah, we figgered maybe that little avalanche the other day scared you off.”

  Wade had all but forgotten about the avalanche while he was busy looking for a new trail. The memory of it came back to him and sent a little chill running up his back.

  He stared at Agnew’s dark, stubbled, cowardly face. A sudden suspicion bobbed up for the first time and became almost a certainty with him. It hadn’t been cattle that had started the rock slide.

  Agnew. Wade was sure the man wouldn’t shoot him in the back so long as there were other cowhands around. But what if he got another chance to make it look like an accident?

  Wade tried to shake off the chill by turning away from Agnew and facing Bess Henry. He touched his hat brim again and felt a thrill running through him.

  “You’re a long way from headquarters, Mrs. Henry.”

  “They’re half my cattle, Mr. Massey,” she replied flatly. “At least they are till they reach the railroad.”

  He felt his cheeks turn warm and hoped the firelight would hide the color he knew flooded his face.

  It wouldn’t pay to try to talk to her. She would have a sharp answer every time. He wished that, for once, she would again be like she had been that first day he had seen her. But he knew she wouldn’t. Not anymore.

  He turned to Price Stockton. “How’s the gather been since I’ve been gone?”

  “Pretty short. Twenty or thirty a day. Couple of times we lost them all.”

  Wade rubbed his chin and looked out beyond the firelight. “We ought to have thirteen or fourteen hundred in that canyon. That’s enough for one drive. Tomorrow we’ll cut out what we don’t want to take. The next day we head for the railroad.”

  Squatting on his heels, Price Stockton grinned crookedly and sipped at his coffee. “We won’t get across the desert with them. We’ll hit that cholla country and in two days most of them will be right back here where they started from.”

  “No they won’t,” Wade said. “We’re not going through the cholla. We’re taking them over the rim.”

  Stockton spilled half his coffee as he jumped to his feet. The rest of the camp was suddenly quiet as an Indian graveyard.

  “You’re crazy,” Stockton thundered. “Nobody’s ever taken cattle up that rock. Nobody ever will.”

  Wade had expected this, but he couldn’t hold down the tremor of excitement that rippled through him. Hands on his hips, he said, “I’m going to, Stockton.”

  Stockton pitched the
rest of his coffee into the fire and dropped the cup. The coals hissed. The ranchman swung his angry eyes back at Wade.

  “They’re still our herd, Massey. I’m not letting you lose a thousand head of cattle for us.”

  Wade noted the way Stockton’s right hand inched down toward his gun butt. A cold shiver passed through him as he moved his own hand into place.

  “I’m taking those cattle over the rim,” he repeated. “With you or without you.”

  He could see in Stockton’s face the debate that went on behind the man’s eyes. A hot mixture of hatred, distrust and fear. But finally the ranchman dropped his hand away from the gun. Wade could hear sharp breaths sucked in by half a dozen men. His own heart had picked up its beat.

  “It’s your hand this time, Massey,” Stockton breathed. “But I’m warning you now. If you lose that herd for us, I’ll kill you.”

  In his own heart Wade could feel the desperation that must be gripping Stockton as the man turned and walked out away from the firelight to hold solitary council. He couldn’t help sympathizing with him.

  He turned and found Bess Henry’s level eyes boring into him. “Tell me, Massey. Just what are you getting out of this?”

  He bit his lip hard, then answered, “Two hundred dollars a month.”

  That took her by surprise. But the doubt quickly returned to her face. “I don’t believe you ever intend for these cattle to reach the bank, Massey. I just wish I knew what you’ve got up your sleeve.”

  So that was it! It wasn’t just that he was going to take most of their cattle—maybe all of them—to pay a loan. They had a suspicion that somehow he meant to take the herd for himself, and leave them just as deeply in debt as they had been before.

  “You’re wrong, Mrs. Henry,” he said quietly. “These cattle are going to reach market, and they’re going to apply against your debt. I promise you.”

  She stared at him a long moment. He thought he could see her eyes soften a little, and he knew it must be his imagination. But even the thought made his heart pump faster.